Uncertainty Quantification for High-Resolution Hydrology Applications in the Western United States

• Activity Number: 280 - Climate Statistics: Studies on the Physics and Impacts of Climate Change Using Data Science
• Type: Topic Contributed
• Date/Time: Tuesday, August 1, 2017 : 8:30 AM to 10:20 AM
• Sponsor: Section on Physical and Engineering Sciences
• Author(s): Jonathan Hobbs* and Michael Turmon and J T Reager and Cedric David and James Famiglietti
• Companies: Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Jet Propulsion Lab/Caltech and Jet Propulsion Lab/Caltech and Jet Propulsion Lab/Caltech and Jet Propulsion Lab/Caltech
• Keywords: emulator ; water resources ; hydrology ; remote sensing ; satellite

Abstract

In an effort to provide high-quality estimates of water availability at small spatial scales, NASA's Western States Water Mission (WSWM) combines a suite of satellite data with multiple high-resolution hydrological models. The modeling effort includes a land-surface model that characterizes water storage as snowpack, soil moisture, and groundwater, along with runoff to rivers, in response to local meteorological forcing. The different constituents of the hydrological cycle can be constrained by conservation principles and available remote sensing data, but uncertainty in inputs, such as precipitation, propagates into uncertainty in the hydrological quantities of interest. Computational constraints prohibit ensembles, but we exploit the land surface model structure and the mission's substantial historical model run to develop an emulator that can characterize the impact of input uncertainty. This presentation highlights the development of the emulator, including the considerations for the relevant time scales for each of the hydrological variables.